


Thinking Inside the Box

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Quantum Leap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's between a solution and the deep blue sea. Al is Al.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thinking Inside the Box

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Rosa and Rache for fab beta-ing, and Caitrin for reminding me how much I loved QL. 
> 
> Written for Caitrin Torres

 

 

"Sam, you did it!" Sam laughed as Al pumped his hands over his head, apparently flushed with pride at Sam pulling it off. "Sam--"

The view around him froze, and a too-familiar tingling sensation ran up his spine as he jumped again into the void... and wow -- this was fabulous! What an enormous amount of gray sky and windswept sea. He was near a guardrail on a well-lit -- and massive -- deck of a ship, just as dusk was falling. Through the blinking of a red beacon, he could see the lights of a vaguely familiar-looking city off what he suspected was the port bow. A quick look down showed himself in a uniform, and male -- thank god--unless he was a woman with truly huge feet. He looked around, trying to get his bearings when suddenly he was grabbed from behind and pulled into the open door of a shipping container.

"Damn you, Kimura. You couldn't just let it alone, could you!"

"What the--?" Mind whirling, Sam started to fight back, but in seconds, one of his wrists was snapped into a handcuff. Whoever this guy was, he knew what he was doing. "Hey, let's talk about this," Sam yelled fruitlessly. As he tried to pull himself away, he found the other end of the handcuff was apparently attached to the wall of the shipping container. "What's going on?"

Sam could hardly see the other man in the unlit container.

"You know what's going on, Kimura. You made your decision."

"Well, maybe I can unmake it," Sam/Kimura said, instinctively trying to take some control of the situation. "Let's talk!"

"Stop begging; it's not dignified," his attacker said, clanging the container's door shut behind him.

As Sam stared around the complete darkness, desperately trying to make something--anything--out, he heard a lock clacking shut. "Hey! I'm already in handcuffs. Is that necessary?"

He heard nothing over the wind and the creaks and rumbles of a ship underway. "Well, this is different," he muttered. The sound of his leapee's voice, similar to his own, was a little soothing, and he gradually felt his heart rate and breath drop towards normal. Okay, he was handcuffed alone in almost complete darkness in an unheated shipping container on the deck of a ship, with no food and no obvious way of getting-- "Hey!" he said to himself, and started to check his clothing with his left hand. Kimura -- whoever he turned out to be -- of course kept his keyring in his right pocket, but with some wiggling and hip shrugs he was just as glad Al wasn't there to make fun of, he finally managed to slid them out. Unfortunately, none of the keys were handcuff keys, and if there was a way to use one of them to open the cuffs, he didn't know what it was. "Al? It's about time for you to wander by...."

Abruptly, the container around him jerked sideways. "Hello!" He reached around in the dark, trying to find something stable to hold on to, as the entire container box started to tug forward. He yelled, "Hey, there's someone in here!" and pounded on the metal walls. His stomach roiled as the container started to rise into the air. "Help!" He started banging on the metal wall of the box with his free hand. "Al! Now would be a great time!" The container jerked, knocking him to the floor, wrenching his wrist in the cuff. In the darkness, he could hear boxes shifting on pallets around him, and hoped nothing was going to fall on him. He dragged himself up on his knees, bracing against the wall, when abruptly, the entire shipping container started to fly through the air! He lost his footing again, banging into the wall, the floor, the wall again as the container swiveled through the air and crashed. As frigid water started to flood through the edges of the door, all Sam could do was moan, "Oh boy."

Later, Sam hoped he'd never remember the first minutes after the shipping container hit the water. This was makings-of-nightmare stuff: not just the freezing cold, the complete darkness, the increasing level of water, the sickening bob and sway of the container in the water, but along with it, a feeling that he was completely alone in the world. "It's okay, it's alright," he said, trying to calm himself down. But the water continued to rush in. Soon he was hyperventilating, then screaming, "Let me out, let me out!" As the shipping container shook in the water, piles of boxes started to fall and shift back and forth, and Sam slid sideways. Another box hit him and he fell into the freezing water. In the darkness, he lost understanding of which end was up, pulling frantically at the handcuff attached to the metal wall to get free.

"Sam, Sam!"

"Al!" Even more than usual, seeing Al was the answer to a prayer. "Oh thank god, th-thank god." Sam got his feet under himself and stood up out of the water." Al -- Wh-where am I? What's hap-happening?" he added hastily

"Sam -- you're okay!"

Sam panted in-out-in-out-in-out, trying desperately for a deep calming breath. He was still handcuffed, over his waist in freezing water under the surface of the ocean, and there wasn't much a hologram could to do to help, but now he wasn't alone, and that made all the difference.

"Well, that depends on your de-definition of okay," he said through his shivers.

"Sam, we gotta fix all that water coming in!" Through the miracles of Quantum Leap holography, Al was as bright as day in his eyes. Unfortunately, since the holograph was affecting his brain directly, Al didn't do anything to lighten up the complete darkness of his underwater tomb. Still, it was great to see him, even if he couldn't see anything else. "Sam -- you listening?"

"Yeah, Al. Can you see where the water's coming in?"

"Uh...it's coming in at the bottom of the door. Just keep one hand on the wall and walk your way over there -- I'll talk you through it."

Sam sighed. "I'm handcuffed, Al. To the w-wall."

"Okay -- new plan. We gotta get you warmed up, Sam!" Al poked at his handset a moment, his movements seemed even stranger lit through the dense seawater. "Ziggy says that one of the pallets has sweatpants in it. You need to break open the boxes and put on more clothing."

"More clothing? Does he realize I'm underwater?" Even as Sam argued, he started trying to reach the nearest box, realizing Ziggy was right -- that putting on more layers of wet clothing would allow his body warmth to warm the water closest to him, sort of like the world's least effective wetsuit.

Prying open boxes, one-handed, in the dark, partially underwater was no easy task, but with Al giving him the leap details as he worked, it seemed more possible. He was apparently a slightly crooked DEA agent working not-quite undercover on a Japanese-US shipping freighter. "...as they were coming into Seattle, apparently they had their doubts about whether Kimura'd stay bought, and they threw him overboard in a shipping container."

"I g-got that part, Al." So far, Sam had found a box of waffle irons, a box of couch pillows, and a box of Tootsie rolls. He was continuing to look for the sweat pants Al swore were there, while trying not to notice that the water level was still rising.

"...you're somewhere in Elliot Bay. Ziggy's still trying to find out precisely when they found the container, Sam. The newspaper articles didn't give the exact time they discovered it."

Sam tugged the next box between his legs and pulled at the sodden flaps until they opened. "Eureka, I think," he muttered, pulling at fabric, getting wetter by the minute.

"Find the big ones, so you won't have to take your shoes off," Al said helpfully. In the dark with numb fingers, Sam had no idea how to tell the large sizes from the small, so he just kept digging through the box.

"This container was on its way to a Costco store in Seattle, Sam."

"Yay," he said sarcastically. "I'd hate to be using sweatshop sweats." He continued to fight the soggy boxes. "Wait a minute, Al. If you don't know when they find it, you don't know how much longer I have to keep going, here."

"How's it going with those sweatpants?"

Sam stopped tugging and gave Al the look. Sometimes it didn't work through the face he was wearing at the time, but usually Al recognized when he brought out the big guns.

"Hey, I can't believe you didn't tell me. What do I need to change to leap out of here? It's not like this is the most fun we've ever had."

Al looked around the shipping container for a minute, then at his handset for another. "Don't you have those extra pants on, yet? Ziggy says you need to have at least three pairs. Four would be better. Then we've got to dig for jackets. And eat some Tootsie rolls, Sam. You've got to take better care of yourself."

"Al..."

"I need to go back and see if I can find anymore out. Be careful."

"Al!" But he was gone, and Sam was alone again in complete, disorienting darkness. Pulling wet fabric over wet fabric was even harder without Al to whine at while doing it. Sam couldn't stop trying to make out details around him; his eyes refused to believe that it was truly that dark.

If only it was that quiet. The sound of the water continuing to rush in was like nearby car alarm that no one would shut off, needling at him. He took two deep breaths and tried to listen past the incoming water to see if he could hear ships or rescue divers. Nothing. He grabbed a salt-flavored tootsie-roll and shut his eyes. It seemed less dark when it was his choice to see nothing.

Crash! The clang of the container hitting the rocks below echoed throughout the box, and boxes and pallets all tumbled through the air and water, hitting Sam and the sides and ceiling. Sam shrieked, he was so startled, but at least they'd stopped sinking. As far as he could tell, the box was now tilted about 55 degrees; and thankfully, the side he was handcuffed to was a little higher than the other side. "I wonder how deep it is here."

Kimura's watch turned out to be on the handcuffed wrist, but thankfully the watch glowed in the dark. 9:42 pm. Sam spent a while trying to calculate what time it would have been in Seattle if it had been just after dusk, but without more information about the time of year, he was just guessing. He could have been in the box for minutes or hours. Or a lifetime or two, based on the amount of adrenaline he'd burned through.

Now that the sinking had stopped, the amount of water coming in seemed to have slowed. Maybe some of the boxes moving around partially filled the hole, he thought. Sam counted down the buttons of his shirt until he reached the waterline, and then checked his watch again. 9:45. Maybe not the longest three minutes of his life, but close. He realized he was going to have to occupy his mind, somehow. He felt around himself in the water -- he'd lost both his tootsie rolls _and_ his sweatpants. The only box he could find were the damned waffle irons.

It took him a while to realize that with the container now resting on rocks, the sounds were different; he definitely heard a thrumming growing gradually louder. Were they rescuers coming closer? He beat on the walls, thrashing in the water, only to feel the entire container jiggle uneasily. The thrumming continued, but after awhile he had to admit it was growing fainter. Sam sighed and let his head bang back on the wall behind him, squeezing his eyes to keep the tears in.

The next thrumming engine sound sucked him in again, waiting, shivering in the dark, praying, leaving him panting and sick with reaction when it too started to fade away.

Time to do what Al said, and take care of himself. He poked away with his hands and feet until he reached a broken board -- probably off of one of the pallets. With it, he started to fish at the boxes around him. Cans of tuna fish--or cat food--from the size. He grabbed a can and rolled it around his hand. Worth a try, he figured. He pulled his other arm as far away from the wall as possible in the handcuff, and felt around in the water at how it was connected. tried to bash at the

Next box, more damn waffle irons. Next -- oh yes, pop top cans! He grabbed a couple and stuck them in his shirt in case everything shifted again, and then popped the top off of one. Cold, sweet and intense, he had no idea what it was, other than the best tasting liquid of his entire life. Something like mango-pineapple surprise or coconut-papaya. His new favorite drink ever. He fought the urge to check his watch again, or count down the buttons of his shirt to check the water level again, and forced himself to go back to fishing.

"Al!"

"Sam, how're you doing?"

After a convulsive gasp, he was able to wheeze out "How do I look like I'm doing?" It wasn't his most convincing comeback ever, but it didn't have to be. Just having Al there to snap at was already calming him back down. Though, honestly, Al had looked better. Sam had never gotten used to seeing his hologram half out of sight, and his shiny red suit jacket and what looked like sharkskin pants looked downright peculiar shining in and out of the water around him.

"Actually, you look okay, Sam," Al protested. "I mean, considering everything." His handset beeped and he glanced at it. "Ziggy wants to know whether you put on enough extra clothing."

"Enough?" Sam gestured sloggily at himself. "I don't know about `enough' but I did get a couple of pairs on before it started to get wild in here."

"Wild?" Al raised a brow characteristically.

Sam just stared for a minute, Al's expressive face distracting him from the meaning of what he'd said.

"Never mind. But he says you need more clothes. There's a 67% chance that the fact you have us here to badger you into putting on more clothes is what saves your life."

"Saves my life? Al, talk."

Al champed on his cigar for a moment, making little faces of denial. "Kimura, um, in the original timeline. He doesn't make it. Sullivan--the nozzle who threw you in here -- confesses, they send boats looking for you, and then a dive team, but Kimura had already drowned before they found him." Al scratched his neck, shoving his fedora lower on his forehead. "Ziggy thinks Kimura got hypothermic, so if we can keep you warmer, ta da."

Sam grabbed his broken stick again in his good hand, and crouched down into the water.

"That's it, Sam. There are some good things in here. Ziggy says there're fire starters--"

Oh, to have a warm lick of fire... "Probably not a good idea with a limited amount of oxygen," Sam said reluctantly.

Al winced. "Okay, yeah. But, there are rain coats that would make a great patch if you could somehow get them to the door."

"If wishes were horses, Al, I wouldn't be here!" He hated to yell, but sometimes it seemed like Al didn't realize what it was like, being alone at this end of the leap.

"I know that, Sam," Al said, sounding almost angry. "I'm trying here."

Sam stopped and looked. Beneath the feather-tipped fedora, Al looked tired. Worried. "I'm trying, too." He waved his stick out of the water to prove it, and got back to work, immediately snagging something heavy. "I think I've caught the plastic wrapping of a whole pallet's worth of boxes. Big fish."

"Well, reel it in, big guy."

"More waffle irons." They both groaned.

"God is an iron," Sam quoted to Al's courtesy laugh.

"Hey, maybe you could put those under you, and be more out of the water."

Sam tried, but it put him too high, having to crouch down to where his wrist was connected. "Al. Ask Ziggy. Is there anything in here I could use to unlock or break this handcuff?" Sam couldn't see it, and in the cold water, he could barely feel it, but he knew his wrist was badly abraded. More than that, though, he just wanted to be freed, as much as he could while locked into a box under the ocean.

Al tapped on the handset for a minute, holding his head sidewise as he did. "Well. How's your lock picking, Sam?"

"In the dark, and underwater? About as g-good as you'd expect."

"Well, Ziggy says there are a couple of boxes of kitchen utensils on the manifest. Forks, skewers, maybe even chopsticks. If you can find one of the boxes, we should be able to get them open."

Sam went back to fishing, a little more enthusiastically now that he had a goal. "Tell me more about Kimura. Have you talked to him? How'd he end up here?"

"The usual way, Sam. One wrong decision that led to another. Doesn't seem like a bad guy. He's even ex-Navy."

"Well, that's proof he's on the side of the angels." Sam caught a part of a box with his broken board, but it ripped before he could pull it close enough to investigate. "Damn."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, it got away from me, but I'll get it." Sam worked in silence for a minute and looked up to see Al looking at him, his arms folded across his chest. "What?"

"You're -- you're the energizer bunny, Sam. You just don't quit. One situation after another, no more equipment than a broken stick, and there you are, trudging up the hill."

"I think your metaphor has run out of batteries, Al."

"I'd like to give you a battery of something." Al shot him a distinctly unamused gaze.

"Tests, say? I'll put my sanity up against yours any day," he said with a challenge and brandished his stick at Al.

"Wait, now you're putting that stick up against mine? I'll have you know that no one has ever complained about my stick."

Sam shook his head. With Al, all conversations eventually led back to his `stick' and didn't Sam know it, but what usually annoyed him to tears now seemed perfect. "I would never impugn your...stick." He continued to wave his board through the water, chuckling to himself.

"Hey, how do I get out of this?"

Al started typing into his handset again.

"Wait a minute. You don't know? You have to look that up?"

"Sam..."

"Don't Sam me. I've been under here I-don't-know how long, and nothing has changed on my end at all. You should _know_ this. How do I get out of this?"

Al chomped on his cigar again. If this was poker, Sam would be about to win a big one, but seeing his tells now wasn't nearly as good a sign.

"We don't know as much as we'd like to, Sam. In the original timeline, Kimura...Kimura didn't make it, and he never got the chance to testify. The inquest doesn't make it clear whether there was enough air for him to have survived until the FBI found him. Gooshie's trying to track down the rescue divers and find out what he can. But honestly, we don't know. Maybe he got so weak from hypothermia he fainted and drowned -- that's why Ziggy wanted you in more clothes. Maybe Kimura panicked and used the air up too fast."

Sam swallowed hard. "Maybe I didn't want to know."

Al smiled sadly at him. "Nope. You always want to know."

"You're right. I do. And I always survive. After all, if there was no way to survive this one, why would I have jumped in here?" Sam snagged another box and slowly pulled it close enough to grab. "Al -- kitchen stuff!"

"Good job. Try and feel for a fork. Or a church key. Hell, a chopstick once worked for me."

Sam continued to feel through the box, throwing aside dishtowels and soup spoons. "When were _you_ ever arrested?"

"Who said anything about being arrested? It was my third, no, my sec--, yes, my third wife who was a big fan of handcuffs. She liked to see me defenseless, I think."

Sam finally found a fork, and started poking at the lock of the handcuff closest to the wall. "Sorry I asked."

"Fire alarm went off from all the candles she lit, somehow she lost the key to the handcuffs, I could hear the firemen coming up the stairs. It's amazing what you can do when you're sufficiently motivated."

Sam threw the fork back into the box and continued digging for something more useful. "Is that a hint?"

Increasingly frustrated attempts at the handcuffs helped him ignore the slowly rising water on his chest, and his ears popping as the pressure continued to rise, but he was still thrilled to hear the thrum of another ship coming near.

He finally asked, "I'm not imagining that, am I, Al?"

"No, Sam. This could be it!"

The noise was getting closer and louder, and this time there were sonar pings just like in a WWII movie. Maybe Al was right! Along with the noise came a small shift in the container, then metal on metal screeches echoing through the water as the shipping container adjusted to the ship's wake. The water sloshed higher as the box shifted again, then a horrible scraping noise nearly deafened him as the box slid across the rocks and slowly tilted further sideways.

"Al!" Sam wasn't totally under water, quite, but again, he'd lost his bearings in the dark; he splashed wildly, trying vainly to get something under his feet. The handcuff further panicked him and he was already gasping for breath.

"Sam, you've got to calm down. Don't panic."

Sam could hear him, but as if from a huge distance; his words didn't penetrate. Sam kept thrashing, pulled completely underwater when a pallet shifted beneath him. He couldn't breathe; he couldn't tell which way to push against; which way was up. He was running out of air, battering at the wall, trying to follow it up, but the water was still over his head. His head echoed with a high-pitched scream, blending in with the shriek of metal on rocks.

"Sam! Sam!" Al's voice was a counterpoint to his own screaming, completely without meaning. "Listen to me, Sam."

Sam thrashed, caught in his fear. He hit out with both hands, frantically; the handcuff jerked him back to the wall but he bounced away again.

"Sam. You've got to come to my voice, Sam. If you've ever listened to me. If you've ever trusted me, Sam, listen to me now." The box continued to tilt, driven by the wake of the rescue bathysphere. "Sam, this way is up. The air is up here, Sam."

Sam was out of air, his chest tightening, frantically searching, when Al's cries penetrated for a second; just long enough to give him another direction to lurch to. His head broke the surface but he kept thrashing, beating his hands on the wall, needing light, air, freedom!

"Don't panic, Sam; come on, don't panic. You're... cleaning out a flooded basement in the dark," he soothed. "You're looking for a fuse box to turn the lights back on. It's all gonna be okay, Sam. Just breathe. You can do it, just breathe."

Sam slowly came back to himself and let himself listen to Al's voice, Al's gruff tenor a lifeline to sanity. "Al," he whispered. "Thanks."

"De nada, Sam."

They stood in silence for a minute as Sam's heart rate slowed and he pulled himself back together.   
A minute later, the rescue divers' bathysphere locked on to the container with a clang. Sam nearly wet himself in startlement, but managed to keep it together and thump back when they knocked on the wall near him.

"Al! We did it!"

"Yes you did, Sam. Yes, indeed you did." Al busied himself with the handset one more time, and turned slightly away to surreptitiously wipe away a tear.

Sam consciously slowed his breathing; four counts in, four counts out. It would be silly to run out of air now, with rescue so close. "Al," he said, stretching up so his smile was completely out of the water. "I know why I lived and Kimura died, and it wasn't sweatpants and Tootsie rolls. It was having you, Al. It was you."

Before Al could answer, an acetylene torch from the rescue divers started to burn through the wall of the shipping container, and as he had so many times before, Sam leaped.

 

 

 


End file.
